چرا باور؟

by John Cottingham, شروین مقیمی زنجانی (Translator)

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Genres: Philosophy, Religion, Theology, Nonfiction, Christianity

153 pages, Paperback

First published July 9, 2009

About the author

John Cottingham is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy, University of Reading.
Professor of Philosophy of Religion, University of Roehampton, London.
Visiting Professor, King’s College London.
Honorary Fellow, St John’s College, Oxford University.

John Cottingham has published over thirty books – fifteen as sole author, a further nine editions and translations, plus (either as single or joint editor) eight edited collections – together with over 140 articles in learned journals or books. From 1993-2012 he was Editor of Ratio, the international journal of analytic philosophy.

Reviews

[Toby · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a concise and thoughtful work of philosophical apologetics. It naturally fits into the gap between popular apologetics, of varying degrees of helpfulness, and philosophical treatments of the subject that will be read and understood by few.

There is not a great deal in here that will be new to those who have read a reasonable amount of apologetic literature. As with many works of apologetics, it works best with those who already find themselves within the Christian worldview and are struggling to make sense of it. It throws up challenges for those outside of that worldview, but not, I think, enough to win arguments. Cottingham is honest enough to recognise that winning arguments is probably not the point. Apologetics is fundamentally about understanding and not explaining. I am not quite sure I go with him all the way in his arguments for an interventionist God who can supervene his own laws. My sense with Jesus is that Jesus does the things that he does not because God suddenly bends the laws but because God by being at the heart of the creation in the incarnation has those laws bend around him. God's very own presence renders those laws malleable. What that means for interventionist and intercessionary prayer I have not yet decided.

[Richard Swan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Recommended by a friend, and very interesting. Cottingham writes lucidly, which is a great boon, and there’s lots of worthwhile stuff here. However, I think there’s a fundamental flaw in his argument, which emerges on p.32 (Continuum edition). Here he argues that the ‘yearning of the human spirit for truth, beauty and goodness’ is either ‘an aberration – a yearning without an object’, or it points towards ‘a traditional theistic conception of an eternal source’. I think there is a third alternative, rooted in our social and mammalian ancestry, so I reject both his theism and his view of atheism.

[Steph De Mel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cottingham's argument for faith in God is carefully considered, compelling, and accessible. I flew through this short book in two sittings, and found it engaging and thought-provoking all the way through. What a fantastic graduation present; I will treasure this.

[Peter · Rating 4 out of 5]

John Cottingham’s brief defence of religious faith, and especially Christian faith, is honest, clear, and occasionally compelling. It is not an account of the traditional arguments for and against the existence of God, but rather an attempt to show what religious devotion is, by pointing from a philosophical standpoint to the features of our experience which awaken devotion.

Cottingham says “We are dependant and vulnerable creatures who need, for our fulfilment, to orient ourselves towards certain enduring values” (p.5). These values of “love, compassion, mercy, truth, justice, courage, endurance and fidelity all belong to a core of key virtues that all the world’s great religions recognise, and which command our allegiance whether we like it or not” (p.5). In later pages these values are subsumed into the familiar triad of truth, beauty and goodness.

Cottingham does of course acknowledge that it is possible to offer some sort of naturalistic explanation for our valuing such absolutes, and that it is also possible to describe much of the world in scientific terms without referring to these absolutes. But, he says, our initial experience is that “reality presents itself to us … as a series of demands” (p.19). For Cottingham, truth, beauty and goodness are both objective and normative, no matter how strange that sounds to those who would insist that reality is only what can be recognised by anyone, whatever their character or private feelings.

Many moral philosophers have returned to the old theory that such values are indeed objective, as much a matter of fact as a mathematical truth. But what is their ontological status? Cottingham says that traditional theism solved the problem by identifying God as the source, and consummation, of all such values. And although there are some problems with some versions of that notion, Cottingham suggests that it is still the best option for those who take moral and mathematical truth seriously as something more than the contingent habits and impulses and predilections of a particular biological and social organism.